Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/300

 280 Hiftory of Do??jeJlic Manners fedion in the middle ages, and of which there were regular profeflbrs. The pradice of poifoning was, indeed, carried on to a frightful extent, and it appears, from a variety of evidence, that women were commonly agents in it. A great part of the foregoing remarks apply exclufively to the arifto- cratic portion of fociety, which included all thofe who had the right to become knights. Through the whole extent of this portion of fociety one blood was believed to run, which was diftinguiflied from that of all other clafTes by the title of "gentle blood." The pride of gentle blood, which was one of the diftinguilliing chara6teriftics of feudalifm, was very great in the middle ages. It was believed that the mark of this blood could never difappear ; and many of the mediaeval ftories turn upon the circumftance of a child of gentle blood having been ftolen or abandoned in its earlier infancy, and bred up, without any knowledge of its origin, as a peafant among peafants, or as a burgher among burghers, but dif- playing, as it grew towards manhood, by its conduft, the unmiftakable proofs of its gentle origin, in fpite of education and example. The burgher clafs — the merchant or trade fman, or the manufa6turer — appear always as money-getting and money-faving people, and individuals often became very rich. This circumftance became a temptation, on the one hand, to the ariftocrat, whofe tendency was ufually, through his prodigality, to become poor, and, on the other, to the rich man of no blood, who fought to buy ariftocratic alliances by his wealth, and intermarriages between the two claffes were not very unfrequent. In moft cafes, at leafl; in the romances and ftories, it was an ariftocratic young lady who became united with a wealthy merchant, and it was ufually a ftroke of felfifli policy on the part of the lady's father. In the fabliau of the " Vilain Mire" (Barbazan, ii. i) — the origin of Moliere's " Medecin malgre lui," — and in one or two other old ftories, the ariftocratic young lady is married to an agriculturift. Marriages of this defcription are reprefented as being never happy 5 the hulband has no fympathy for his wife's gentility, and, according to the code of "chivalry," the lady was perfe6tly juftified in being unfaithful to her hulband as often as flie liked, efpecially if flie finned with men who were fuperior to him in blood. It